List of IDE available for Salesforce coding

Force.com IDE (Eclipse)

This was first and official IDE from Salesforce and enjoyed monopoly as one and only IDE for many years.
The Force.com IDE is a powerful client application for creating, modifying and deploying Force.com applications. Based on the Eclipse platform and built on the Tooling API, the Force.com IDE provides a comfortable environment for programmers familiar with integrated development environments, letting you code, compile, test, package, and deploy all from within the IDE. Much of the actual work, such as compilation, happens on the Force.com platform—the Force.com IDE performs the communication and result parsing transparently.
The Force.com IDE is open-source and you can download the source code on GitHub.

Force.com IDE
Force.com IDE

Sometimes I use Force.com IDE only for ApexPMD plugin, which analyse Apex code and provides some area where code can be improved like SOQL written in loop.

Welkin Suite IDE

If you are coming from .Net background or love Visual studio then this is IDE of your choice. This is Visual Studio based IDE with lots of cool features like local history, intuitive interface, Visual Studio look and feel many more goodies. However, currently it doesn’t support lightning components or application.

Salesforce Welkin Suite IDE
Salesforce Welkin Suite IDE

Cloud 9

This is also one of mostly loved cloud based IDE among developers. It is very easy to setup and use, It also supports lightning components. You can read more about its capabilities here  , if you want to use it then navigate to this URL.

Salesforce Cloud9 IDE
Salesforce Cloud9 IDE

Developer Console

This is currently my choice of development IDE and currently recommended and supported by Salesforce. There are lots of capability to fall in love with this editor and most important is Performance profiling, Checkpoints, Query execution plan, Log files and many more to count.

Salesforce IDE - Developer Console
Salesforce IDE – Developer Console

Mavensmate

This is plugin for Sublime text and roughly around 80% of developers are using it. This is also opensource and very powerful IDE. You can find more about differences and features supported by Force.com IDE, Developer console and Mavensmate in this post.

Salesforce IDE - MavensMate
Salesforce IDE – MavensMate

Atom

This IDE started popping up between developers of many other programming languages like a storm and thanks to Mavensmate team who has created plugin for Salesforce to work with Atom. Currently its in Beta build and hopefully we will be able to see production built very soon.

Salesforce IDE - Atom Plugin
Salesforce IDE – Atom Plugin

 Aside.io

This is also one of very first web based IDE launched when Salesforce announced Tooling API , very fast and easy to use. I used this IDE a lot last year before moving back to developer console.

Salesforce IDE - Aside.io
Salesforce IDE – Aside.io

Brain Engine

This is cloud based IDE and provides many promising features for Salesforce.

Salesforce IDE - Brain Engine - Object Explorer
Salesforce IDE – Brain Engine – Object Explorer

Illuminated Cloud – JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA Plugin for Salesforce
Illuminated Cloud is a powerful new Force.com development tool hosted within JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA. Illuminated Cloud is hosted within IntelliJ IDEA—both Community Edition and Ultimate Edition are supported—users are also able to leverage IDEA’s extensive core feature set for Force.com development including its powerful source code editors, polyglot language support for composite applications, and tight integration with version control, task management, and bug tracking systems.

Illuminated Cloud - JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA Plugin for Salesforce
Illuminated Cloud – JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA Plugin for Salesforce

 

Metaforce

This is new IDE for Salesforce and developers started using it pretty fast. I am using its chrome extension, however as per website, its available for Mac in appstore and soon going to be released for window store.

Metaforce IDE
Metaforce IDE

It very easy to use and fast as well. You can download it from chrome store. It has variety of feature packs, but my favorite is support for Lightning Component development.

You want to create your own IDE ?

If you you are still not happy with above options and want to give some efforts then you can create your own IDE. This post walks through my Dreamforce 2014 session on creating IDE in 30 minutes.

If I missed your favorite IDE, then please share your feedback.

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25 responses to “List of IDE available for Salesforce coding”

  1. Sudipta Deb Avatar
    Sudipta Deb

    Hi @Jitendra, Thanks for sharing the information. I am a big fan of Mavensmate and compared to Eclipse, Mavensmate is really powerful. I think Salesforce should declare Mavensmate as one of their preferred IDE. Eclipse is far far behind.

    1. Jitendra Zaa Avatar

      Salesforce sure knows pain of developer and that’s why Tooling API was released which is going to be used by any editor. I am very sure there will be many IDE’s in pipeline from different vendors. Mavensmate, no doubt is best IDE till date.

  2. Harshit Pandey Avatar

    I have total move on Atom, being open end lover and sublime is top choice, but Atom is adopted heavily in rails and node world and I am big fan of it

  3. Yegres Vosurt Avatar
    Yegres Vosurt

    I use Intellij Idea. Now develop plugin for it – Illuminated Cloud. Also I know that new plugin with full support Apex and offline compiler will release in autumn.

    1. Jitendra Zaa Avatar

      Thanks for Information, Added this entry as well.

  4. Scott Wells Avatar

    I’m the developer of Illuminated Cloud, the plugin for JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA that Yegres mentioned in the previous post. I’d definitely appreciate it if you’d take a look and include it in your list!

    1. Jitendra Zaa Avatar

      Thanks for feedback, Coming from Java background I am sure many will find it very useful.

  5. Abhinav Gupta Avatar

    Great coverage @JitendraZaa:disqus

  6. Atul Gupta Avatar

    This is an awesome guide…I like mavensmate, but it doesn’t have any local history feature 🙁

  7. Yegres Vosurt Avatar
    Yegres Vosurt

    Please participate in the Salesforce IDE survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/B5QXMVQ
    It help us to implement powerful IDE with a lot used and popular features.

  8. Eric Baranowski Avatar

    Great post, appreciate it!

  9. Allen li Avatar

    There is a new salesforce IDE named Metaforce. It’s released in google web store.

    https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/metaforce/hhnkaakhlhngcdckdiogpkjihnmgodep

    1. Rahul Sharma Avatar
      Rahul Sharma

      Wow … Thanxx

  10. Rahul Sharma Avatar
    Rahul Sharma

    Is Illuminated Cloud plugin for JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA free?… or there is preview period and after that we have to pay to use…
    Can anyone tell me plz?

  11. Lance Shi Avatar

    Awesome summary. Just one small bug to mention – the link to Welkin Suite IDE is incorrect. It is pointing to your email address.

  12. Yegres Vosurt Avatar
    Yegres Vosurt

    @JitendraZaa:disqus Could you please add JedIDE to the list?

  13. Nagesh Avatar
    Nagesh

    This needs to be updated. MaVen’sMate has shutdown shop. VSCode & SalesforceDx is the new kid on the block. This is a very painful combination and I would recommend everyone to stay away from it.
    Maven’smate was truly the best IDE out there and good news is that it still works for me.

  14. Michael Shumenko Avatar
    Michael Shumenko

    JetForcer is a good tool for Salesforce deveopment https://jetforcer.com/

  15. Pankaj Kathar Avatar

    Hi Jitendra,

    Thanks for your informative article.

    I have few doubts related with force.com ide now.

    1. Has Maven’smate no longer be enhanced and supported by them officially as we can see this from their website. And what about it’s existing version and support, any idea?
    2. Also it seems that eclipse force.com ide will also be officially going to be deprecated slowly by Salesforce. And new official supported Salesforce IDE will be Slaesforce extension for VS code?
    3. In Developer edition we do not have Dev hub and scratch org, I am finding it difficulty practising sfdc force commands, any suggestions?

  16. FOCO Avatar
    FOCO

    hello @Pankaj Kathar,

    Salesforce recommands Visual Studio Code (VS Code). With it you can do all things in SFDX.

    Thanks!

    1. Dave Humm Avatar
      Dave Humm

      I agree that VS Code is a nice editor for Salesforce now particularly if you are using windows.

  17. Hassan Ali Avatar
    Hassan Ali

    @jitendra
    any reason why did you move back to dev console from aside.io ?

    1. Jitendra Avatar

      I left at a time when Lightning development was not supported by aside.io

      1. Vinay Vernekar Avatar

        Aside.io will be going to shut down as per the legal notice from Salesforce. https://www.aside.io/shutdown

  18. […] Salesforce developer worked immensely on force.com IDE and ANT migration toolkit but not able to fit with new development […]

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